Heartbreak Haze
by Arthur Hansen
Summary: Just a little snippet of how would you get and use Jessica Jones in Worm.


The twenty-one year old girl stared at the bottle suspiciously. She tried to pour more of the cheap whiskey into the glass, but her superpowers totally failed to break reality and put more liquor into the bottle. With a sigh, she turned back to the computer notebook where she researched a Mr. Tim Long for more clues on his infidelity.

A knock sounded on her door.

The dark-haired woman looked up to see just one blurry figure on the other side of the privacy glass. "Come in!" she shouted.

The skinny and very tall man in slacks and a button up shirt looked around her office/living room. "You're the detective?"

"That me. Just call me Jessica... and you are?" she replied in a barely civil tone.

"Danny Hebert. I need you to track down some evidence for a court case." His hand clenched hard around the spiral bound notebook. "My daughter was hospitalized by a prank, but the school is refusing to do a proper investigation. I didn't- I didn't think too much about it, but I decided to check my daughter's room in case some of the things they were accusing of might be true." Danny stood up taller. "I didn't find anything like that, but I did find a notebook that listed her _daily_ bullying. And they five different email accounts full of hate mail that she kept as evidence. It's pretty gross stuff. But it's not evidence I can bring to a judge."

"And that's why you came here," Jessica said. "My rates are pretty reasonable, but this could take a while."

"If you get the evidence I think you will, I should be able to get the school to settle for a decent amount and start to fix things," he replied.

"Alright then. Let's start from the beginning and go over everything." Jessica smiled.

* * *

Greg shivered as the girl looked at him like a bug to stepped on as he tried to be innocuous in the shaded spot under the stairs to the next floor.

"Hey, what's your name?" she asked.

"Um, Greg."

"So, Greg? Do you know who the go to kid is for all the going ons that get recorded here? I'm looking for some information about a prank gone bad," she asked as she looked around the school as kids got ready for class.

"Chuck might. Big fat kid over there. He's kind of a creeper." And Greg was nothing like him at all, dammit!

"The big fat black kid or the big fat white kid?"

"The white kid," Greg answered truthfully.

"Thanks." Jessica walked down the hall to the three hundred pound kid that was just over five feet tall. "Hey, you Chuck?"

"Yeah?" he replied as he looked over at her as he pulled his attention from the insides of his locker.

"Here you are the go to kid for the dirt on pranks and stuff?"

"That's me. I like to get the recordings of things, but no one ever cares." Chuck watched her wait until a Korean kid moved along.

"I hear there was a big prank on Monday-"

"Oh, the one they are calling the locker girl. I didn't record it myself as I was late to school, but I did get a few recordings from some of my friends," Chuck replied.

"Well, you are making my job easy. How about $200 for the recording." Jessica smirked, as she would pay up to a $1000 easy for it.

"$400."

"Kid, please. $300. $400 if you have any other recordings of her being bullied."

"I got a couple of memory cards for that, but those aren't cheap," he replied.

"A... _couple_ of memory cards? Video and photos?"

"You want them all, that's going to cost you $600," Chuck replied

Jessica nodded. "You've got a deal. Got the cards on you?"

"In my locker here. Show me the cash first."

The detective pulled out her wallet on its very heavy duty chain and opened it enough to show the fifties and twenties inside. Most of her life's savings at this point.

Chuck licked his lips nervously. Holy shit, she had the goods! He reached into his locker and pulled out a double plastic baggie (can't be too safe) of memory cards. He took the three memory cards that had (mostly) the pranks played on Taylor. He'd have to get new cards and get copies from his home computer.

"-five-fifty and six hundred dollars. Keep an ear open, okay? I might need more information in the future." Jessica gave him a winning smile and then started to walk to the nearest exit. And soon she could go to bed after ten hours of work an one actual jackpot-

"Hey! You! The girl in the leather jacket!" a male voice called out. A moment later he grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. "I'm talking to you, you shitty goth."

"What the fuck is your problems, asswipe?"

"Is that any way to talk to your teacher, girl?" the physical education teacher asked.

"I don't go to school here, I was here looking for information. I'm a writer, you see, so I'm getting information on schools in troubled areas of the city," she explained. "I actually went here about five years ago, but had to pull out after my parents died." And got Mastered by a bastard when I went out heroing.

"Show me some ID, girl."

Jessica gave him a dirty look and pulled out her State ID. "See. 21 and legal."

"I think you should stay right there while I call the cops. I bet you are selling drugs-"

"Look, dumb shit, do I look like I'm homeless and smell like a Merchant? Go ahead and call the cops. I'm sure they will be thrilled when they don't find any illegal drugs on me and can then throw some charges at you."

"Get out of here," the coach ordered. "And I don't want to see you here or I will call the cops."

* * *

Alan Barnes' nose flared in irritation as his daughter Emma fussed with her fingernail with an emery board. Next to him sat a mid-thirties woman and on the opposite side sat Sophia Hess. Finally, one row back sat Madison Clement sat with both of her parents.

Principal Blackwell looked very upset. "I don't see why this is at all necessary, Superintendent. Winslow High will do its job to protect all of our students. Our lawyers are just about finished up with the agreement about the incident from two weeks ago."

At the front of the room sat seven people. The superintendent sat in the middle with the other members of the Board of Education.

"I think I am qualified to decide if we need to be in this meeting, Mrs. Blackwell," Paulson said with a very thin smile.

Off the side sat three more people; Danny Hebert in his best suit, another man in a much more expensive suit and Jessica Jones still wearing her jeans, T-shirt and leather jacket.

"Can we get on with this?" Alan said in a stern voice.

"Certainly. I have never been so disappointed in my life at the accusations brought against Winslow, it's staff and students. In fact, I thought it ludicrous that something so horrible could be going on in a school in the United States. After reviewing the evidence brought to myself, I brought in the rest of the board. First off, Blackwell? You're fired. There is a detective outside that wants to ask some questions they have about child neglect and abuse at your school under your watch." Paulson's brown eyes looked hard at the families that looked very surprised. "As for you three girls, you are expelled from any public schools here in Brockton Bay. I have already talked this over with the State Superintendent and she decided that you unrepentant reprobates are a clear and present threat to students and will be denied admittance to any school in the state."

"What the fuck? You can't do that!" Sophia shouted as she stood up.

"You, young lady, have some friends in blue outside waiting to arrest you on assault charges. Excuse me, _eight_ assault charges. Luckily you were the only one that actually laid hands on Miss Hebert."

"Eight assault charges?" the woman next to Sophia asked. "Based on the words of one girl?"

"Based on dozens of video recordings of the three girls systematically bullying Miss Hebert," Paulson explained. "You are all free to leave now."

"But what about their education?" Alan demanded.

"That is no longer our concern. I could suggest a few private academies that are structured around _problem_ children. A couple of them might even help fix their morals while at it." He turned to Danny's table. "Mr. Hebert, if you would wait afterwards so we can discuss how the state is going to repay you for our very serious failures."

Sophia stood up with clenched fists. A plan started to form in her mind to let the cops cuff her-

The buzz-zzaaat of a taser right behind her hit her in the butt as she stepped through the door. She collapsed in a spasming heap. The two uniformed cops had their guns out and pointed at Sophia's handler.

"She broke her probation and I was instructed to make sure she could not rabbit." The cool eyed woman looked at the other two families. "This is private matter. Please move along." She carefully reached into her purse and pulled out a wallet of some sort and opened it so only the police officers could see it.

"Sophia!" Emma shouted as she started to go help her friend, only to be stopped by her father.

"We can't help her by getting jailed for assaulting an officer," he whispered to her.

* * *

"Well, shit. That was almost therapeutic," Jessica said an hour later as the bureaucrats left.

"A check will be mailed to you in a week," the lawyer said with a smile even as he shook his head. It took all type.

"I'd like to thank you for everything you did. My daughter will get better and I'm ecstatic that they are going to process her transfer. Your very thorough evidence made it so they paid out more than Jameson thought they would." Danny shook her hand and missed her discomfort at that.

"Well, I won't say no to a bonus or a couple of bottles of whiskey." Jessica gave them a small smile and headed to the door out of the conference room.

She decided to head out the front entrance. Two men in suits stepped up behind her and grabbed her arms.

"Jessica Jones, you are coming-" the older man said only to find himself back and against the stone wall of the School District Building.

"What the fuck?" the younger man said just before Jessica lifted him up and threw him into a pile of snow.

The young woman dropped into boxing stance. "Okay, assholes!"

"Freeze! PRT!" a third man in a suit called out, a gun pointed at her.

"What the fuck does the PRT want with me?" Jessica asked as she very carefully raised her hands.

"Well, we were going to ask you about what you were investigating at Winslow High and if you broke any... rules."

"So you goddamned grabbed me from behind? I could have accidentally killed you shits!"

The officer with the gun thought for a long moment, the lowered his gun. "And I apologize for that. Stevie there thought you had tumbled onto some too-sensitive information."

Jessica lowered her hands and thought hard. So if they weren't here for her, then they were here for her current case. "Look, all I did was find proof that three girls were shitheads of the highest order and handed it in. I did not see nor find any information about _parahumans_."

"So who are you supposed to be, anyways?" the older guy managed to get to his feet while holding his shoulder.

"I'm... nobody. Just a P.I. trying to get by." She gave the old guy a sneer. "I don't play cops and robbers in costumes anymore. So just fuck off and let me go on my way. I've got a paycheck to cash."


End file.
